Women manipulating men for a more comfortable life (or even just to survive) is as old as patriarchy itself, being born from the disparity between men and women’s relative positions in society (‘The female Andrew Tate’: the new influencer dating doctrine is extreme – but I can see why it’s popular, 9 August). SheraSeven’s “dating doctrine” is apparently gaining popularity, and both the subject of this article and its writer, Kimberly McIntosh, rightly identify gendered power as relevant context. Men hold more privilege, money, status and agency. Women are perpetually required to adapt to and/or resist this oppression. Here, the focus is on heterosexual relationships. But there is a more sinister undercurrent that McIntosh fails to address.
I found it jarring that the article said SheraSeven had often been described as “the female Andrew Tate”. Although it said this description was used “half‑jokingly”, this nevertheless gives a dangerously misleading impression that an equivalence between SheraSeven and Tate is in some way possible – it is not. Misandry (and actually I saw none of this in SheraSeven’s views) and misogyny are not some kind of gender-swap equivalents. Violent misogyny is actively expressed in every corner of society every day – women are beaten, murdered and raped with impunity – and this is the context for Tate’s vile fame.
Some women tackle power inequalities in society by the manipulation, exploitation or indeed humiliation of men, but this takes place within the context of the gender hierarchy where men retain pre-eminence. There can never be a female Andrew Tate.
Soo Lincoln
Leeds
• I read this article with horror, not least because I come from a generation (boomers) who fought hard for our independence and for the right to equal pay etc. In one fell swoop, SheraSeven is undoing years of fighting for our rights independent of men. Her advice is no more than a return to the bad old days of fawning and game-playing, taking men for what you can get, and to hell with the consequences.
It’s nothing new. It’s not right and it will certainly get you, as a woman, labelled a gold‑digger. There’s nothing good about this. Human decency seems to have failed this young person and those who follow her.
Angela Elliott
London
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